


Cradled

by FadedSepia



Series: Clint Barton Bingo Lines [2]
Category: Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: I just built something pretty; then smashed it on the floor, I made myself sad, M/M, Rane made me do it, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-02
Updated: 2019-04-03
Packaged: 2020-01-01 06:36:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,791
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18330596
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FadedSepia/pseuds/FadedSepia
Summary: Clint Barton Bingo Prompts: Huddling/Warmth (G4), Bucky/Clint (B3). Bucky and Clint are forced to bunk down temporarily in a recently cleared Hydra base.





	1. Fluff

**Author's Note:**

  * For [AnaraneSindanarie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AnaraneSindanarie/gifts).
  * Translation into 中文 available: [Cradled](https://archiveofourown.org/works/19367488) by [FadedSepia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/FadedSepia/pseuds/FadedSepia), [Llyan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Llyan/pseuds/Llyan)



> Okay, going to be honest. This was partially to fulfill a Clint Barton Bingo Prompt (Huddling or Warmth & Bucky/Clint), and partly as a gift for Rane. Now, I don't like to (and I'm not very good at) write(ing) whump, or angst, but I gave in to this birthday request.
> 
> I have left you, dear reader, with an option. This work has two chapters. (And a third epilogue I added later because apparently I'm a glutton for emotional punishment.) If you want sweet/semi-goofy huddled cuddling: Read the first chapter, then **stop**. If you want to hurt yourself, read the second chapter. (If you want one more kick when you're down, read the epilogue.)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is the fluffy chapter. It fulfills the bingo requirement, and won't make you sad. Enjoy, dear reader!

“Shit.” This last room in the compound was just like the last three they had cleared; cold, dark, and now occupied only by the corpses of Hydra operatives bent on running right into their lines of fire. “It’s still creepy how they go down with the ship like that.”

“Makes our job easier.” Even when they realized who had breached their defenses, they’d kept coming. At least with AIM, there was a chance they would give up or fuck off halfway through. Hydra, by comparison, was always a fucking mess to deal with, both figuratively and, given the slow leaking and puddling happening all around them, very literally.

“Yeah, but I wish they’d kept the heat on.” Clint kept talking, even as Bucky slid off his vest, all but forcing his boyfriend into it. “What time is our extraction?”

“Twenty-one-hundred.” Bucky noted the clock on the wall – analogue, probably battery powered knowing Hydra’s habits – which was still running despite the shutdown of the main power systems. Four hours until the Quinjet would circle back to pick them up. Fan-fucking-tastic. “They gave us way too much time for this.”

Clint shook his head, eyeing the bodies with a look that was more disappointed than disgusted. Which, of course, Bucky could understand. This was the only barracks area, and now it was all corpsey and fluidic. “So… think there are there any rooms that _aren_ ’t frozen corpse caves?”

He didn’t. This had been among the most recent of the Hydra facilities he’d been able to remember from his time as their Asset, and it had come with all the usual trappings; wiping chair, cryopreservation chambers, operatives who didn’t realize that deep immersion B.A.R.F. therapy and sheer stubborn bull-headedness meant they couldn’t trigger the Winter Soldier into being their murder machine, again. And, of course, a location in the middle of nothing North Dakota to accommodate the need to keep the equipment, and any Assets – Bucky still shuddered at the thought that there had been _more_ , once – appropriately cold. It would only get colder.

Despite their general precision on missions, a combination of arrows and bullets in the control room had knocked the power off line, and the base was slowly chilling further around them. Which, of course, Bucky noted with a mostly casual indifference, even as his partner shoved his hands up into his arm pits. It didn’t bother him, but he ran hot. He grabbed Clint’s elbow, steering them for the only empty, non-splattered bunk, an upper bed at the far back corner of the tiny room. It would have to do.

He clambered up, pulling the taller man in close against him, and wrapping the blanket around them both. Clint pulled his legs further in, cuddling close in against Bucky’s chest. He settled, at least until Barnes wrapped him into a hug, wringing a sharp squeak from the blond archer. “Babe, as comfy as this is, and as much as I love Tony for giving you extra arms, this is not one of the ones that stays warm, so…”

Bucky dropped his left arm to his side, cradling Clint closer with his right, although there was barely space to breathe between them, and Clint was effectively curled up in his lap. “There. Just like home.”

Clint shook his head, his mess of post-mission blond hair tickling beneath Bucky’s chin. “Okay, Barnes, I know you had a Spartan upbringing, but home for me requires a couch, a dog, and probably a much more comfortable pair of pants.”

“Or no pants?”

“No pants Sunday only happens if you're not a sassy asshole.” Clint giggled, feet burrowing under Bucky’s leg. “And also assuming we ever have a Sunday off together.”

He lent down to kiss Barton’s temple, smiling softly to himself. “I'll make a deal with you. After this, I'm going to semi-retire. Not forever, maybe half a year. That gives us twenty-six Sundays.”

“Babe, I've been semi-retired for years, and I still get sent out on this shit.”

“I mean it. Six months, no missions.” He leaned back, flesh hand cupping Clint’s cheek, pressing their foreheads together. “There's a reason you're dating this super soldier, and not Stevie.”

Clint crossed his eyes, grinning. “Because kissing someone exactly your height always feels awkward as fuck?”

“Because I know when to step back and let someone else take over the fight.”

“Yeah, but… it’s worth it, sometimes.” There was a blush – and not from the cold – creeping up behind Clint’s ears. The kind that usually meant he was going to say something ridiculously endearing. “Because then I get to come home to you, or you come back, and we get to have nice slow _‘I missed you so much on the mission, doll’_ sex… and semi-retirement means no more of that for a while.”

Bucky snorted a laugh; Clint had certainly nailed the _ridiculous_ part of that endearment. “You don't really call it that?”

“If I say no, does that mean I get more, or less?” He squirmed as Clint ducked his head, nuzzling in below his ear, pressing the lightest of kisses there. “What do I have to say to get more?”

“How about we just agree to make it home, and you promise not to pull your stitches? And you are going to need stitches, _doll_.” He could feel Clint smile against his cheek, the soft puffs of air against his neck as his lover laughed.

“Deal.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Do you feel happy dear reader? Warm and fuzzy? Then now would be a good time to **stop**. Maybe go have some tea, and forget you ever saw the link to a second chapter.


	2. Whump

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is the whump. I didn't mean to write this story to be broken up this way, but I did. If you want to hold on to the warm-fuzzy goofiness of the last chapter, **stop reading NOW**. That's the last warning you get, dear reader.

He woke up in a cryochamber, to the familiar _brii-briip-whir_ of the signal alarm and the lock disengaging. Bucky could feel a sick bile rising in his throat – if they hadn’t cleared the base, if Hydra _had_ captured him – until a blur of worried face and mussed blond hair swung over the chamber. “Clint..?” His vision swam a moment and he blinked, clearing the last film that followed the melted ice, and he finally focused. It wasn’t Clint. “Stevie? Why..? Why’m I in here?”

“You got cold, Buck.” Rogers worried his lip between his teeth, cutting his eyes down before he looked back. “Too cold, too fast. Your body reacted like it was going into stasis. We had to bring you up slowly.”

Made sense. He felt like he’d been under. Hydra had always wanted Bucky to come up a little sluggish; made it easier to get him into the chair. It made for a pretty awful wake-up, and he was still feeling prickles in his limbs. “What time is it? Where's Hawkeye?”

“It's ten thirty, Buck.” Steve’s bulk was blocking most of his field of view, but there was light streaming through the grimy windows, wan and weak. Besides, if it had been night, Steve would have said twenty-two thirty. Which didn't make sense. Their extraction was due for twenty-one-hundred.

The cryochamber had never taken that long to bring him up, and that was from a full freeze. There was too much time unaccounted for. “How's Haw-”

Steve was jostled, moving sideways as another face leaned in over the chamber.

“You're up.” Natasha leaned in over him, finger just barely patting his arm. She smiled, the deadly mocking one that only belonged on the face of the Black Widow. There was a twitch, all but imperceptiblte, at the edge of her mouth. Then the corners of that smile were pulling back, in, and down, her lower lip quivering as terror and something else, something that felt unameable and devastating, crept into her gaze. Natasha turned on her heel, stalking out of the room, Wilson hot on her heels.

Steve slumped, jaw set, and reached in to haul him forward. “C’mon. We need to get you out of there...”

He clasped Steve's forearm in his flesh hand, pitching shakily forward. “Stevie. Answer me. Where's Cli-?”

There was another pod beside his, humming softly in the stillness of the room. “What’s Clint doing in cryo, Stevie? He's not like us, he can't… Why aren't you monitoring him? Where're the readouts?”

The chamber wasn't in cryo mode, though the glass was cool, but only cool, to the touch. Clint's eyes were closed, face slack. Wrong “When we started warming the place up… there was no other cold storage for the… for his body, Buck.”

The world around him him blurred, greyed and focused on the lifeless face on the other side of the glass. Steve's pained explanation – “ _… Hydra must have conditioned your metabolism to suspend itself below a certain temperature…_ ” – was a senseless drone, a buzz across the background of a world gone grey.

It didn't matter how loud he hollered. That he cracked the view glass, knocked the pod off its hinges. He couldn’t stop trying, though he knew. Clint wasn't waking up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry. I don't usually write whump, and I hope it didn't: A) suck, B) make you cry.
> 
> Thank you for making it here.


	3. Epilogue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Took a prompt from the person for whom I wrote this and added this tiny epilogue. Still very angsty. Read at your own risk.

He always knew when it was time. Bucky would start in on the questions, worrying at them like a loose tooth. Starting at the edges, but spiraling down to the heart of it. It didn’t matter how many times it happened, there was always a part of Steve that hoped – against everything – that this would be the last time. It never was.

_“Your dog really seems to like me more than you, Rogers.”_

_“Seriously, is there a reason Black Widow hates me? She shot me, right?”_

_“Has it only been three months? Feels like I’ve known you forever.”_

_“That wall… It used to have a target, right? Like a… like a dart board? Where’d I put that thing?”_

_“So did that archer guy quit?”_

_“Stevie, did I used to like purple?”_

_“My apartment… It shouldn’t be empty? Should it?”_

_“Steve? Where’s Clint?”_

Steve sighed as he set Bucky down, as gently as he could, on the metal. It had taken half again as many tranquilizers this time; Bucky was building up tolerance to _this one_ , too. He carefully opened Barnes’ mouth, tucking the bite guard in place, then set to strapping him down. Putting the cage on was always the worst. It made Steve no better than _them_ , really, no matter what Natasha might say.

But it was the only kindness he could offer Buck, now. Even if the time between wipes was shrinking, memories of Clint prodding through the façade they’d all hoped would at least keep him stable. The first time had been almost two years. Then, just barely, one. They’d switched drugs, but it kept coming back. Ten months. Nine. Seven. Now five. How long before it stopped working altogether? Before the shocks and the drugs and the reality – the grief – were too much? How long before they lost him permanently?

Steve didn’t know, but he’d be there, until the end of that line. He armed the switch, listened to the chair rev up, and flipped it on. He didn’t look away. He owed Bucky that much.


End file.
